


Any Guy Will Do

by Neftzer_nettlestonenell



Category: Robin Hood (BBC 2006)
Genre: F/M, Rare Characters, Rare Pairings, unusual pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 20:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13666398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neftzer_nettlestonenell/pseuds/Neftzer_nettlestonenell
Summary: Some sibling relationships are...more unconventional...than others.  This fic takes place entirely prior to the torchlit Map-of-England scene between the Sheriff and Gisborne that immediately follows the opener of 2x01.





	Any Guy Will Do

"Rise and scowl, Gisborne! Rise and scowl!" The Sheriff half-merrily danced his way into Gisborne's bleak-by-design Nottingham bedchamber. Sir Guy cracked open a single eye, his brain somewhat muddled by the Sheriff's unusual presence here. Certainly he had never wandered into what stood as Guy's private castle quarters before.

But he had not come alone. Two of the castle's rarely-seen chambermaids accompanied him--and the castle smithy, as well. The smith had a large, oaken tub hefted onto his broad back.

"What's this?" Gisborne asked, though (as was the case of late) his tone was hollow of true curiosity.

"I am having a guest, Gisborne. As a consequence of her presence here,  _you_  are having a bath." The Sheriff indicated to the smithy to deposit the tub at the foot of Gisborne's rather Spartan bed.

"A woman?" Gisborne questioned, using his elbows to lever his body upright on the mattress. "When you are also convening the Black Knights?"

The chambermaids began filling the tub with (surprisingly still) steaming water.

"Ah. So clever! Always so fast on the uptake," the Sheriff snapped his fingers. "Never a dullard moment with you about, Sir Guy.  _Really_. Yes. With the Black Knights coming. It is my sister that I expect. Davina."

Gisborne was just now throwing his two legs over the edge of the bedstead. As usual of late he had not bothered to undress, but had slept in his leathers. "You have a sister?" This was mildly interesting. "I was not aware you claimed  _any_  family."

"True, true. I do not claim much. But that is neither here nor there. Strip off, Man! Down to your very giblets!" To the chambermaids the lord high Sheriff of Nottingham Castle directed; "I want him scrubbed until he's red as a newborn babe. Or what I have been led to believe newborn babes look like." An expression of slight disgust crossed his face at that thought. "Special attention to the undercarriage, my fine wench," he addressed the shorter one of the two in particular. Turning back to his master-at-arms he delivered a warning with gusto, "Mind you, saving yourself, Gisborne. Saving yourself!" He cautioned his lieutenant away from any funny business with the two females. His eyes flashed. "Know how you can get with the-- _help_  around here."

Gisborne sneered at being treated and spoken to so, though not as broadly as he might have done--not in view of the Sheriff. He had no intention of removing item one of his clothing while Vaisey was still present.

"I am in need of your particular talents, Guy," the Sheriff told him, drumming fingers on his own bearded chin, all the while unpleasantly studying an area of his chief henchman's trousers. "Davina has had a long and arduous trip, no doubt. She will need...certain things she will not agree to accept from... things best left to strangers." The Sheriff had looked away briefly, out the room's single, narrow window, as though he might sight his sister on the road even now. 

His head turned and his eyes again snapped 'round to Gisborne's. "I am depending on you to do your best to...meet her exacting needs. Scratch her itches. Satisfy whatever cravings she might have upon arrival."

Guy's eyes narrowed. Certainly he was in no mood to offer visitors hospitality (whatever their affiliation). "Sir? Why me?"

"What d'you mean, Gisborne?" the Sheriff threw his hands up in air quotes, "'Why you'? Why, you're her bloody housewarming gift."  


* * *

A member of his personal guard arrived to tell him the Sheriff's Davina had arrived, that at her request she had been installed immediately within her appointed chambers (an opulent--usually vacant--suite which had once housed Sir Edward's, the former sheriff's, wife), and would not meet with her brother the Sheriff until later. After resting.

"At the Sheriff's command, Sir," Gisborne's man told him, "she has sent for you."

"Aye," Sir Guy agreed. "No doubt the Sheriff has put it about that her orders are to be followed as though his very own?"

"Yessir," the man nodded. "That he has."

Gisborne cast his eyes about for his usual neck scarf of Gisborne chartreuse. He could not find it. Among the things left by the chambermaids he found one in the Sheriff's grey-blue that had not been among his things earlier. It was clean and dry, and so in lieu of his own he wrapped it about his neck and tucked it under his collar.

No reason, really, to pretend that this was anything other than it was--him, at work per the Sheriff's bidding.  


* * *

"Good afternoon... _Mistress_ ," he said, uncertain whether Vaisey's sister had right to any title, and uncomfortable at the present moment giving any woman the designation, 'my lady'.

The statuesque blonde turned around and appraisingly surveyed him up and down, her nostrils flaring as though she sought to catch the scent of the post-bathing oil a chambermaid had brought to him. She had a look of (undeserved, he thought) imperiousness to her.

"Very well," she declared, without replying to his greeting. She again turned her back to him, with dispatch unhooking the half-skirt from about her waist that had hung about her traveling breeches and concealed her well-defined-in-those-pants rump.

When she turned back to him, she displayed her left hand to him, posing with it up by her jaw. "A little gift from my brother," she purred. "I am told he found it in the shallows of a lake near...Locksley?"

Even in the dim light he recognized what had been Marian's ring.  _His ring, given to Marian, to seal a bond of wedlock_. His blood was immediately to the boil, and he crossed the room without added thought to following the Sheriff's bidding an inch further.

He grabbed her hand without thought to courtesy or what pain his raging grip might cause her. She did not protest, but used her still-free hand to grasp the Sheriff's colored scarf he had put on. One finger's twist in the right spot and it grew more than uncomfortably tight, constricting his free breath.

They held each other like this for a moment, him having her hand in abeyance, her, his throat.

"Good," she crooned. Referencing the emotion behind the angry passion with which he had attacked her. "I like fresh," she said, and he knew her eyes had settled on the yet not-so-old injury he wore on his cheekbone. "Fresh...whatever." Her eyes half-slanted, almost like those of a woman in carnal throes. She gave her finger another quarter-twist.

He stared at her head-on, murder and betrayal (enacted and also received) in his eyes. Yet he did not capitulate her hand back to her.

" _Mag_ nificent," she declared, letting the binding of the neck scarf go. Still, she did not acknowledge the obvious pain in which he had put her hand. With her now-freed second hand, as he roughly panted but refused to gulp to make up for what air she had stolen from him, she grabbed his chin, and forcibly turned his face and his gaze to point away from hers.

Curious as to what she might do next, he let her.

Still with her grip on his chin, she dragged her tongue along the rough stubble of his beard as it trailed up toward his ear, then brought her teeth to bear on the middle curve of his jaw where it met with the underside of his chin. More than a nibble, but less than a full-on bite.

During this his fingers found the ring. It proved easy enough to slide off--it was barely over the knuckle, her hands larger than the bride's it had been made to fit. Roughly he jerked it from her, and thrust it without looking toward the opening of a nearby window revealing the gathering twilight outside, where it would plummet to a place beyond him, beyond her, beyond the Sheriff's wishes. Beyond once earnest hopes and dreams. A place of darkness, of utter lostness. He abandoned it to that dark.

And with it, himself as well.  


* * *

He did not succumb to sleep afterward, as was his usual routine. Rest and peace chose to evade him. 

He looked beside where he lay to the Sheriff's sister Davina, marks like welts upon her naked ribs and bared waist from where she drew and wore her rigid corset so severely. Her mouth hung open in sleep, and a slight snore escaped her lips.

"Everything," she had egged him on at one point in their fevered tangle, " _everything_  looks better by firelight."

Something about how her cheeks billowed in this moment, the silhouette of her half-seen upper teeth, the tone of her skin, caused him to desire immediate escape from those sheets, as though he had found himself about to be dipped in boiling oil. 

It was impossible in that room not to think of the Sheriff.

As long as that was the case, he reasoned he might as well get himself to the new war room and report to the man, himself. See if all things did, in point of fact, look better by firelight.

**The End**


End file.
